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Nicola Robinson
My thesis investigates how and why different models of nationalism and development from particular historical moments in Israel/Palestine and Sri Lanka are depicted through literary and filmic representations of land and labour. This comparative study, the first of its kind to bring the contexts of Israel/Palestine and Sri Lanka together, discusses literary and filmic representations against the backdrop of settler and internal colonisation and nation-building. My geographical and historical focus in both contexts is the state and nation-building period prior to 1948 when the state of Israel was established and Sri Lanka became independent as well as the development discourse and practice in the contemporary period. I am interested in how the writers’ and filmmakers’ representations of the spatial strategies and practices regarding the control of land and labour can draw attention to and evaluate processes of uneven development and social change. I also examine the different ways that literature and film is produced, particularly its formal aspects, in order to articulate alternatives that either consolidate or contest the historic and current social order.